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Guest Blog: Diamonds in the Rough

On August 4, 1860, the Putnam Grounds in Brooklyn was the site of a baseball game between two of the area’s top teams, the host Putnam club and the Excelsiors. The contest, while having the curiosity factor of being a “fly game” — one in which a ball had to be caught on the fly to register as an out, rather than on one “bound” — would normally have been most notable for being a warm-up for the Excelsiors’ game against the Atlantics five days later, one that could wrap up the national championship.

But this day holds a special place in the history of Jim Creighton, the 19-year-old pitching phenom who had taken the game by storm. It was the day that the Brooklyn Daily Eagle sent a reporter to weigh-in on the legality of Creighton’s pitching delivery.

“We have heard so much of late, in Base Ball circles, about the pitching of Creighton, of the Excelsior Club, and the fatal effect of the scores of those who bat against it,” the correspondent wrote in the Aug. 6 edition of the Eagle, “that we determined to judge of the matter ourselves.”

From the moment of Creighton’s debut as a pitcher a little over a year earlier, his performance had been analyzed and debated. A pitcher was restricted to an underhand delivery, with a stiff wrist, and to date no one had been able to meld a fast delivery with any degree of control. The Eagle correspondent noted that Creighton delivered his pitches “from within a few inches of the ground, and they rose up above the batsman’s hip, and when thus delivered, the result of hitting at the ball is either to miss it or send it high in the air.”

Yet, if Creighton was stretching those rules, no one had been able to conclusively call him on it. “We went prepared to watch his movements pretty closely,” the correspondent wrote, “in order to ascertain whether he did pitch fairly or not, and whether his pitching was a ‘jerk,’ ‘an underhand throw,’ or a ‘fair square pitch,’ and the conclusion we arrived at was, that it was unquestionably the latter.”

The author of the report is almost universally believed to be Henry Chadwick, the preeminent sports writer of the day and the only scribe to be elected to the main wing of the Hall of Fame. So, the great Chadwick had signed off on Creighton’s pitching . . . the matter is settled, right? Any number of short biographies on Creighton have referenced this article.

But there’s a good chance that they’re all missing the point.

First off, if this was indeed Chadwick writing for the Eagle, he intentionally misleads his reader. The piece is written as if this is the author’s first exposure to Creighton in action, but we know that Chadwick attended, at the very least, the Excelsiors’ previous two games, including the epic 23-4 thumping of the Atlantics two weeks earlier.

Chadwick’s intent appears not to have been to give Creighton his seal of approval as much as to admonish the whiners who claimed that the pitcher was stretching the rules to deliver an unhittable ball. “Now that we have seen it attentively,” he wrote of Creighton’s pitching, “our wonder is that such experienced batsmen as the Atlantics could ever be mastered by it in the way they were on the occasion of their contest with the Excelsiors.”

Peter O’BrienChadwick’s point was that speed wasn’t the issue. “It is something else,” he wrote, “and that something else is — as we heard a cricketer remark near the score’s table, judging the difference between balls coming straight to the bat and those coming with curved lines.” In other words, timing. His advice to batters trying to solve the offerings of the Excelsiors’ wunderkind was to “either strike only at low balls, or if at high ones strike with your bat perpendicular, as, in the latter case the curve of the ball in rising cannot deceive the eye.” He finishes by adding that he hoped to see his theory tested in the big game to follow in a few days.

What moved Chadwick to weigh in on the Creighton controversy at that point? It may have been that he judged the Atlantics’ top hitter of being guilty of sour grapes. Years later, he related a conversation from early in that first Excelsior/Atlantic game, when lead-off batter Peter O’Brien returned to the bench after striking out. “Why, we can’t hit that pitching, Henry,” he moaned. “The fact is, it’s underhand throwing.”

Was Chadwick’s subsequent Eagle article intended to advise O’Brien to suck it up and improve his attitude? Perhaps. The piece on the Excelsior/Putnam game concluded with “We observed that P. O’Brien seemed to watch Creighton’s pitching closely, and as he made no objections as to its fairness, we presume that it met with his entire approval, for Peter is not a man to hesitate about doing his duty.”

The game was fairly typical of the Excelsiors’ season. After giving up two runs in the first inning, Creighton shut out the Putnams for the next five frames as his team built a 15-2 lead, on the way to a 23-7 victory. Creighton scored four runs to lead his team at bat.

But a much more important game was in the offing.

Three innings into their rematch with the Atlantics, one could have forgiven the Excelsiors if their thoughts drifted to the fitting of a collective crown. Ahead, 8-0, before an enormous crowd of 15,000 that ringed the Atlantics’ field at the corner of Marcy and Gates avenues, their teenage pitcher again dominating the reigning champions of the game, it appeared inevitable that the title was going to change hands.

Creighton was on the verge of cementing his place in this history of the game, perhaps a place so high that even casual fans would remember his name today. Instead, he was about to hit rock bottom.

Joe Leggett, left; Asa Brainard, rightIt happened in fits and starts, helped along by some poor work behind the plate by Joe Leggett, whose three passed balls helped the Atlantics to break onto the scoreboard with two runs in the fourth. Another run in the fifth, and then three more in the sixth cut the margin to 12-6. And then the bottom fell out.

The Atlantics’ seventh-inning explosion looms large in the annals of a club that was already renowned for late-inning rallies. Everyone hit Creighton, and hit him hard. Eight of the nine batters in the lineup scored at least one run, and the one who didn’t, John Price, had what might have been the hardest-hit ball in the inning, being robbed of a hit on Edwin Russell‘s catch in left field that was judged one of the finest ever seen. In succession, Archie McMahon hit a two-run double, O’Brien brought him home with a double and then scored himself when Joe Oliver tripled. When it was over, the Atlantics had nine runs and a 15-12 lead.

One wonders what happened to Creighton. In the 21st Century, the turn of events would be constantly dissected through the 24-hour news cycle, theories would be offered, replays would be shown ad nauseum. The reports of the time merely passed it off as a bad day, when the star pitcher didn’t have his best stuff. “Creighton’s pitching was very good for the first few innings,” the New York Times reported, “but it became manifest in the seventh innings that he was not in condition.”

It was true that season that Creighton tended to be stronger in the early-to-middle innings, and either tired or let up a bit in the late going, when the game was usually in hand. But he never in his career was hit as hard as he was that frame. He saw out the inning, but Leggett brought in Russell to pitch the final two innings, and the Atlantics didn’t score again.

The Excelsiors didn’t give up, slicing a run off the lead in the eighth. In the ninth, Asa Brainard led off with a double, but appeared he would be stranded at third when the next two batter went out. Leggett responded with an infield single, with Brainard beating a throw home. But Dickey Pearce, playing catcher, snapped a throw to second baseman John Oliver, catching Leggett trying to take an extra base on the play. The game ended, and the series was tied. The third game would be played two weeks later at a neutral site, the Putnam Grounds on which the Excelsiors had recently won. But which Creighton would show up for the game? The one who had dominated the Atlantics in July, or the one who had been driven from the box in the second game?

The rubber match between the Excelsiors and Atlantics would mark a turning point in baseball history but, unfortunately, not through the heroics of anyone on the playing field. It was the most significant event in a season in which interest in the presumptive “National Game” took a quantum leap, and might best be represented as the dividing line between the sport’s genteel beginnings and a modern era in which the pursuit of victory superseded any previously accepted niceties.

Creighton & PolhemusWhen Jim Creighton took the mound in the bottom of the first, at roughly 3:30 p.m. on a late August Thursday afternoon at the grounds of the Putnam Club, he already had a five-run lead, courtesy of a couple of two-run hits by Henry Pohlhemus, the Excelsior’s massive centerfielder, and John Holder. This circumstance was nothing new: in the three games of the series, the Excelsiors scored a total of 22 runs before being answered by the Atlantics.

Otherwise, things were quite different. The Putnam Grounds were smaller than the home fields of the Excelsiors and Atlantics, but the crowd (estimated at 15,000) was just as large as the previous two games. The relative lack of women in the crowd was noted, their presence generally being seen as a civilizing factor on the male supporters.

And then there was the gambling factor. Although newspaper reports tended to characterize those who were wagering on baseball games as the lowest form of fandom, there’s no question that the sport’s rise in popularity went hand in hand with the ability to put down a bet on the outcome of a game. When the series had opened, the Atlantics had been made a narrow favorite by oddsmakers. The first-game thumping they experienced likely shifted those odds, but the reigning champions’ thunderous comeback in the second game had not only evened the series, but gave the impression that their mojo had been restored. It was clear from newspaper reports that most of the bettors in attendance of the deciding game were looking for an Atlantic victory.

Despite the Excelsiors’ early lead, the game was tight and tense, with each team looking rattled at times in the field. Errors and passed balls contributed to many of the runs scored over the next few innings, but after the Excelsiors scored a pair in the top of the fourth to take an 8-4 lead, the game took a turn.

With one out, the Atlantics’ Hamilton singled and advanced to third on a stolen base and a passed ball. Joe Oliver took his time with Creighton’s pitching, but on the 22nd offering, he hit a foul tip that hit Leggett in the neck and then fell to the ground. The Excelsior catcher was able to pick up the ball on the bound. The umpire, however, didn’t see the catch and didn’t signal Oliver as being out.

The umpire was Richard Thorn, the pitcher for the Empire Club and something of an interesting choice for a game with such an intense atmosphere. He was considered a swift-ball pitcher in his own right, but an 1857 article in Porter’s Spirit of the Times characterized him as one who “sometimes let his feelings get the better of himself,” becoming agitated with batters who let what he considered perfectly good pitches to go by without swinging the bat.

Oliver, noting that Leggett had made the play, began to head back to the bench, but his teammate, Archie McMahon, directed him back to the plate. This may seem like nothing to the modern fan, but it was considered a breach of good sportsmanship in 1860, to try to benefit from such an error. Leggett explained to Thorn that he had caught the ball on the bound, and Leggett, being a gentleman and all, certainly wouldn’t lie about something like that, so Thorn reversed his call, and Creighton retired Mattie O’Brien on a pop up to second base to end the inning. The Atlantics had missed a chance, and the crowd began to get restless.

The Excelsiors went down in order in the top of the fifth, after which things began to get more heated. Pearce led off by reaching on an error, and Charlie Smith slammed a double to bring him home. McMahon followed with a single to left to cut the margin to two runs. He stole second, and when Peter O’Brien fouled out to Ed Russell at first base, McMahon took third. But he slid past the base and when his hand pulled off it, John Whiting slapped a tag on him and Thorn called the runner out.

Rather than accept the call, McMahon vigorously argued that it didn’t matter that his hand was off the base, because his foot was still in contact. Chadwick, in the Clipper, wondered if that was so, then why did McMahon feel the need to try to get his hand back on the base? Whatever the case, Thorn wasn’t buying it. His call held, and Creighton then induced John Price to pop out to Thomas Reynolds at shortstop to end the inning. But the tension in the park had finally bubbled over.

“The rowdy element which had been excited by a fancied injustice to McMahon,” the New York Times reported, “now became almost insupportable in its violence, and shouts from all parts of the field arose for a new Umpire; the hootings against the Excelsior Club were perfectly disgraceful.”

But it was the Atlantics who appeared to be feeling the pressure in the top of the sixth. With one out, Mattie O’Brien missed Leggett’s pop up back to the pitcher, and then failed to pick up the bound as well. Creighton grounded into a force out, but was safe at first when Price dropped the relay. Charlie Smith then missed Russell’s liner to third base, and when he tried to throw out the Excelsior runner, Price dropped another throw.

All of this was taking place against a rapidly deteriorating background, as elements in the crowd became louder and began straining against the boundaries of the field that police officers present were attempting to maintain. At one point, Leggett threatened to take his team off the field unless the situation improved, but by the time Price had committed his second error of the inning, the scene had gotten worse rather than better, and Leggett decided he’d had enough.

In that moment, Joe Leggett was a man with a a foot in each of two worlds. The Excelsiors, among the teams that competed at the highest level, were perhaps the last representatives of the first era of baseball, when the game was a gentleman’s sport, and sportsmanship trumped all other considerations. On the other hand, winning was clearly important to the Excelsiors captain. He’d drilled and organized his team to be champions, and, as far as Jim Creighton went, he accepted whatever corner-cutting the pitcher had done to become the best at his craft, as well as whatever financial arrangements the club may have come to with the young phenom. But this scene was apparently one which Leggett could not accept.

Peter O’Brien caught up with Leggett as the Excelsiors were leaving the ground and tried to talk him into returning. When that didn’t work, he asked if the Excelsiors would at least agree to call the game a tie, a request to which Leggett acceded. And thus ended, in embarrassing fashion, the most significant game in the sport’s most significant season to that point.

Boxscore, 8/23/1860

O’Brien and the Atlantics got what they needed: in the heat of the moment, there was no telling whether or not the game would be recorded as a forfeit to the Excelsiors, but a tie ensured no resolution to the series, and therefore the Atlantics kept the championship.

For the gamblers who brought about the end of the game, their ends were also accomplished. No result meant all bets were off, and with the Atlantics appearing to be on the verge of throwing the game away in the field, there’s little doubt that many a wager was saved by the game ending prematurely. The timing of the uproar was likely no mistake, either. This was a very slow-moving game, as batters on both teams were waiting out the opposing pitchers. The report in the Clipper included a very detailed, multi-tabled box score, so we know exactly how many pitches were thrown to each batter. In five and two-thirds innings, Mattie O’Brien had thrown 334 pitches. In five innings, Creighton had thrown 331, including 71 to just two batters, Hamilton and Oliver, in the second inning. The game had started at 3 p.m. and had already run 3:20 when it ended, which means that it likely wouldn’t have gone more than seven innings before being called on account of darkness. And with the Excelsiors on the verge of adding to their lead due to the Atlantics’ misadventures in the field, it was no wonder that people with money on the line began causing a commotion.

Interestingly, modern re-tellings of the game have failed to mention something that the New York Times report thought important enough to include in its lead: “It would not be entirely correct to say that this result was unlooked for, as statements have been openly made within the last few days that the Excelsiors would not be allowed to win in a close contest.” Boxing matches had been known to have been disrupted in this manner, in order to wipe out betting responsibilities. Perhaps baseball was, for the first time, being victimized by that mindset.

The result was left to be rehashed in conversations among baseball fans and in the press. The media initially sided with the Excelsiors, claiming that while the Atlantics themselves may not have been responsible for the crowd’s behavior, they did nothing to try to calm the hoard.

“We certainly think he acted wisely in so doing,” wrote Chadwick in the Clipper, in regard to Leggett leading his team off the field, “and we only regret that he was not supported in his course by the Atlantic nine, as that was the only method of putting a stop to the outrageous conduct of the low gambling set that were present on the occasion.”

“We hope it will be the last great match that takes place,” wrote the correspondent from the Brooklyn Eagle, “if such scenes as took place yesterday are to result from them. Such confusion and disorder, and such gross interferences with a match by the spectators, we never witnessed. If the admirers of this manly pastime desire its future welfare, they should at once proceed to adopt stringent rules among the various clubs, against betting on the result of the matches played, for it was unquestionably a regard for their pockets alone that led the major of those peculiarly interested in the affair, to act in the blackguard manner they did.”

But was the uproar really so bad, so vile, so beyond the pale? What if the modern fan could see film clips of what transpired? Would he or she think it no worse than what you could find in any ballpark in this day and age. Would we be appalled, or would we just smile at what might now be considered an overreaction? We, of course, can’t know; all we have is the written word, and it’s likely that the media would have sided with a more gentlemanly standard for fandom.

At any rate the Atlantics weren’t buying it. The tipping point likely came two days later, when the Excelsiors played the Knickerbockers, running up a 30-0 lead before easing to a 32-9 victory. An Excelsior club official weighed in as to how much more satisfying an experience it was to compete against such a gentlemanly club, rather than . . . well, you know . . .

The Atlantics responded with an official press release that questioned why they could have been expected to bring to order a crowd of many thousands when the large corps of policeman on site couldn’t manage it. The letter, formulated by club members and signed by secretary F.K. Broughton, insinuated that perhaps the problem was with the Excelsiors, that they were too soft to deal with a little spirited rooting, the kind of stuff the Atlantic players would just ignore. “We would recommend to those aspiring to the championship not to be too hasty in leaving the field,” the letter concluded, “as it is a ‘poor road to travel’ and does not lead to that envied and coveted position.”

A short while later, an anonymously-sent package arrived at the Atlantic Club, containing what was claimed to be the game ball. Details of the game were written on its side, including a pointed reference to the fact that the Excelsiors had been leading when the game ended. The Atlantic Club members were not amused, although they did keep the ball for their trophy case.

And so it went. Atlantic supporters wrote to the newspapers suggesting that there wasn’t sufficient threat from the crowd to end the game, echoing the official club stance that the Excelsiors’ sensibilities were a bit too tender. Thorn, the umpire, weighed in with an “official” interpretation that did nothing but confuse both sides. There was initially some hope that the game would be replayed, perhaps without a crowd allowed, but that was never going to happen; there was no good feeling remaining between these two clubs.

At some point, Excelsior Club officials announced they would no longer compete for championships, which essentially meant they would no longer consider scheduling games with the Atlantics. And they never did. Although the players would sometimes meet as teammates in all-star competitions, the two clubs would never again meet on the field.

One of the biggest losers in the whole debacle was Creighton, or rather his legacy. The prevailing attitude after a month or so of hashing out the tie game through the newspapers was that although the Excelsiors were leading, the Atlantics had the momentum. This may or may not have been the case. Surely the Atlantics appeared on the verge of falling apart in the field. And Creighton did manage to record the crucial final outs of the fourth and fifth innings. What if he had been given the chance to see the game to its conclusion, to gain redemption for his failings in the second game? Would his name still be remembered, more than a century and a half later? Would he have been elected to the Hall of Fame?

Certainly no one at the time was worrying about the legacy of a 19-year-old. He’d have plenty of time to add to his list of accomplishments.

What do you do when the high point of your season ends on such a frustrating note . . . and there are still eight games left on the schedule? You press on . . .

A week after defeating the Knickerbockers, the first game in a home-and-home series with the Empire club had Creighton facing off against Thorn, the pitcher who had umpired the third Excelsior-Atlantic game; the Excelsiors won easily, 23-7.

That set the stage for another interesting pitching match-up, when the Excelsiors squared off against Union of Morrisania. The Unions’ Berney Hannegan was another young fireballer, but with nowhere near the control of Creighton. Indeed, part of his effectiveness might have been the result of batters not willing to stand in against some of his wilder pitches. Against the Excelsiors, he was at the top of his game, but Creighton was better, allowing only two runs in the first eight innings of a 7-4 victory.

After a 46-15 victory over Independent of Brooklyn, it was time for the Excelsiors to once again hit the road, and for Leggett to reconnect with an old friend.

Sometime after joining the Excelsiors, Leggett had made the acquaintance of a Baltimore man named George Beam who, like Leggett, was a grocer. When Beam made a business trip to Brooklyn, Leggett invited him to take in an Excelsior game, and Beam was so taken with the sport that on his return home he began organizing his own team which he of course called the Excelsiors. Now the Maryland Excelsiors wanted to host their Brooklyn namesakes.

The final score was Brooklyn Excelsiors 51, Maryland Excelsiors 6, which was not a surprise or even much of a disappointment for a home crowd that had pretty much expected their own team to get thrashed and were apparently happy just to see baseball played at its highest level. Perhaps the Brooklyn team was further inspired to perform for the many Southern belles in attendance; Asa Brainard, Whiting and Reynolds were reportedly so enthralled by the view that Leggett had to remind them to keep their heads in the game.

The game would otherwise be of little significance but for a couple of chapters it added to the Jim Creighton legend.

Beam, apparently wanting to get the first look at the young Excelsior pitcher, installed himself as the Baltimore lead-off batter. One correspondent wrote that Beam “was hardly prepared for the swift, lightning-like balls which Creighton began to favor him with. He struck once without effect and looked astonished; he struck again, and missed, and looked surprised; again he made an ineffectual stroke at the ball, and gave up his bat, apparently in wonder and admiration of the performance of the pitcher.”

Creighton had a 36-2 lead after five and a half innings, when he switched places with Russell in left field. Russell quickly gave up a run and Baltimore had runners on second and third with none out when a fellow named Shriver hit a long drive to the outfield. Creighton ran the ball down, making the catch with his back to the action, then spun around to whip a throw to Whiting at third, who then relayed the ball to Brainard at second, catching both runners before they could return to their bases in what may be the earliest documented triple play. As an added bonus for the crowd, Brainard reflexively tossed the ball to first base, where A.T. Pearsall caught it and comically brandished it in case there were any other candidates for being put out.

On the way home from Baltimore, the Excelsiors defeated a Philadelphia all-star team, 15-4, and a week later recorded another 23-7 victory over Empire. A little over a month later, they ended their season with yet another significant Creighton moment.

On November 5, the Excelsiors met the St. George Cricket Club, which was the most prominent cricket organization of the era. While that might not sound like much of an opponent for one of the ranking baseball clubs of the day, it should be noted that many of the top baseball players of the day also played cricket, Creighton included, and similar batting and field skills were required in the two sports.

According to newspaper reports, the St. George Club looked among its ranks for its best fielders to put in its lineup. It probably would have been better off choosing its best batsmen, as Creighton accomplished something that had never been done before: he pitched a shutout, winning, 25-0. Coverage of the game was scant, so there are no details about the number of baserunners he allowed, but it was a fitting end to a breakout season, one in which Creighton won 17 of 20 games, with two one-run losses and a tie.

Even so, the Atlantics stole the headlines once again; only a week earlier, they had won the rubber game in a three-game series with the Eckfords to defend their national title.

After the experiences and successes of 1860, you would think that a rising talent like Jim Creighton would be pretty much unbeatable. And in one sense you’d be right. In 1861, Creighton didn’t lose a single game. Didn’t win a single game, either.

Students of history will no doubt note that momentous things were happening in the country at the time. One day after Creighton shutout the St. George Club, the American electorate voted in Abraham Lincoln as the nation’s 16th president. But it was a divided America that voted. Lincoln was pretty much a shoe-in, given that the Democratic Party had split, with different candidates in the North and South.

For the next month and a half, the question of secession was debated throughout the South, until South Carolina took the step of leaving the Union on Dec. 20. By early April, six other states had followed suit, and on April 11, the Confederate States demanded the surrender of Fort Sumpter, the fortification in the middle of Charleston Harbor to which Major Robert Anderson had removed U.S. troops a week after South Carolina had voted to secede. After two hours of bombardment by Southern forces, Anderson chose to return fire, giving the honor of ordering the first shots to the fort’s second in command, a union captain named Abner Doubleday. Yes, that Abner Doubleday; firing the North’s first official shot of the Civil War was something he actually did do.

In New York, the newspapers had featured stories only a couple of months earlier about the prospects of another great baseball season, but those predictions came crashing down. The sport didn’t exactly shut down; these were, after all, amateur clubs not playing a set schedule. But after taking two steps forward in 1860, it definitely took one step back. The Atlantics, after playing 12 games the previous year, played only seven in 1861. They split a pair of games with the Mutuals of New York, but never played a rubber game and therefore held on to the title. The Eckfords’ schedule dropped from 17 to 12 games, the Gothams from 13 to three, the Eagles from nine to five, the Unions from 10 to four . . . baseball had certainly not died out, but it seemingly had hit the pause button.

Three significant teams played no games in 1861: the Knickerbockers, the Putnams . . . and the Excelsiors.

Actually, it would be wrong to say that those teams were dormant. They simply confined themselves to intersquad play. Reportedly, more than 90 members of the Excelsior Club signed up to go to war, including John Whiting, the hard-hitting third baseman, and Joe Leggett, the heart and soul of the team. A third starter, fancy-fielding first baseman A.T. Pearsall, was just finishing up medical school during the first year of the war, and soon after disappeared. A native of Alabama, he’d returned home to serve the Confederate Army as a field doctor. When word got back to the Excelsiors about Pearsall’s allegiance, he was drummed out of the club.

It was almost certainly the departure of Leggett and his leadership skills that led to the Excelsiors’ lack of activity. All of those intersquad games had to have been a bit boring, but at least Creighton had the diversion of competing for the American Cricket Club, where he was developing into one of the area’s top bowlers. But as the calendar turned to summer and other clubs began to play match games, perhaps the Excelsiors’ stagnation became too much. So Creighton and Asa Brainard jumped ship, joining the Atlantics.

One would think that such a “revolving” of top players would have been a major story, but the large newspapers didn’t appear to touch on it. Perhaps no one outside the two clubs knew. Whatever the case, the pair had a change of heart and three weeks later returned to the Excelsiors, presumably with their tales between their legs.

The only newspaper report of this coming and going appears to have been in the Brooklyn City News. “We understand from good authority that Messrs. Creighton and Brainard have resigned from the Atlantic club,” the correspondent wrote, “and withdrawn their resignations form the Excelsiors, so that they are still members of the latter club, and will take part in their matches this month.” The “matches” referred to were apparently only intersquad games.

The episode could be viewed as a window into Jim Creighton’s character, but in this case it’s easy to be charitable to the young pitcher; he likely just wanted a chance to play ball. Even the Brooklyn City News story made the point that “No club can expect to retain their members unless they take active part in the matches of the season.” Creighton and Brainard were teammates on the American Cricket Club along with the Atlantics’ Dickey Pearce, with whom Creighton had struck up a friendship. It is, of course, possible, that there were under-the-table payments involved, because with no games being played, whatever financial arrangements the Excelsiors had with Creighton may have been off. In the end, it appears that, given the animosity between the two clubs, the transaction was too much of a powder keg to hold.

Sam and Harry WrightBy the time the fall of ’61 rolled, there was plenty to keep Creighton occupied. On Aug. 23, he bowled out eight batters and had the day’s high inning of 27 runs to lead an American team in a 147-145 loss to a collection of top British ex-patriots at the Long Island Cricket Club. A month later, he took part in a two-day benefit at St. George Cricket Club for club pro Sam Wright and his son, Harry (yes, that Harry Wright). The first day featured another American/England all-star cricket competition, but the following day saw a rather strange version of baseball played, with Creighton pitching for an all-star nine against a team of 18 cricket players, who had double the number of players in the field and also received six outs each inning when their side was at-bat. Despite the advantage in number conceded, the “baseball nine” won the game, 45-16, with Creighton scoring seven runs.

But the highlight of the baseball season occurred a month later. Attendance was down all around, and interest was muted, so Frank Queen, the editor of the New York Clipper, decided to do something to jump-start that interest. The first baseball event to truly grab the public’s attention had been the Fashion Course game of 1858, a best-of-three all-star series between the top players in Brooklyn and New York. Queen proposed having the Clipper sponsor the Silver Ball Game, so named for the trophy for which similar select teams from Brooklyn and New York would compete.

The game was a success; the quality of play was judged to be high, and eight thousand spectators, the largest crowd of the year, showed up in Hoboken, N.J., at the Elysian Fields. The Excelsiors, Atlantics and Eckfords each contributed three players to the Brooklyn lineup, with Creighton joined by teammates Pearsall and George Flanly. And Creighton was the man of the hour, dominating the competition as he had the year before in an 18-6 Brooklyn victory. Pearce had the honor of catching Creighton on the afternoon; Joe Leggett was back from the war, but not in playing shape, so he instead stood in as the umpire.

But that wasn’t the final activity of the year for Creighton. On Nov. 7, a benefit baseball game was held for Pearce and Creighton in Hoboken.

“The large circle of friends of Mr. Pierce (sic) conceived of the idea and arranged the match for his benefit,” the Brooklyn Eagle reported, “but he generously desired Mr. Creighton to be included, and thus the two are to share the proceeds, and to judge from the large circle of their acquaintances the proceeds will amount to something handsome.”

This would seem to be an indication of the depth of the friendship that Pearce and Creighton had developed, as well as suggesting that whatever Creighton had gotten in the way of financial considerations in 1860 was no longer coming his way in 1861. Benefit games were a polite and accepted way of raising money for an athlete in need without jeopardizing his amateur status. The Eagle estimated the crowd at between two and three thousand, which means that at 10 cents per ticket, Pearce and Creighton would have split between $200-$300 . . . not exactly a king’s ransom, but a buck went farther in the mid-19th Century.

The Eagle opined that Creighton “did not come up to his usual mark in pitching” in the first inning, giving up a pair of runs, but by the time the opposing team could score again, Creighton and Pearce’s squad had a 9-2 lead. The final score was 17-7, and no doubt many a fan in attendance had his appetite whetted for an 1862 season in which Jim Creighton and the Excelsiors would return to competitive play.

Who could have known that on that November afternoon, the young pitcher had only 346 more days to live?

Coming Soon:

Part 4: His final bow, and a transition into legend.

Sources:Baseball in the Garden of Eden by John ThornJim Creighton by John Thorn (SABR bio project at sabr.org)Inventing Baseball: The 100 Greatest Games of the Nineteenth Century, edited by Bill Felber of the SABR Nineteenth Century CommitteeBaseball’s First Inning by William J. RyczekBaseball Founders by Craig B. Waff, William J. Ryczek and Peter MorrisSearching for Jim Creighton by Thomas W. Gilbert (Base Ball, A Journal of the Early Game, Vol. 8 , edited by John Thorn)The National Association of Baseball Players, 1857-70 by Marshall D. Wright
Digital editions of the New York Clipper, the New York Times and the Brooklyn Eagle

John Thorn, in his book Baseball in the Garden of Eden, opens a section on Jim Creighton with the following anecdote:

In a cricket exhibition in 1859, Creighton played for an American 16 against an English 11, and clean bowled five wickets in six successive balls, an impressive performance for any level of competition. When John Lillywhite, one of England’s top players, witnessed Crieghton throwing a baseball, he honed in on the problem that American batters faced on the diamond: “Why, that man is not bowling, he is throwing underhand. It is the best disguised underhand throwing I ever saw, and might readily be taken for a fair delivery.

It’s a great story, at once illustrating the young Creighton’s rise as one of America’s top all-around athletes, and also addressing the controversy that immediately sprang up around his ability to do on the mound what no other pitcher could do.

Unfortunately, none of it tracks with what we can prove.

The fall of 1859 was a significant season in cricket. That was the year that the cream of the English crop made their first tour of North America, a dozen of the very best professionals. It was likely the greatest international sports event since the original Olympic game had last been held. The English team played five full international exhibitions, in each case sending their own picked 11 against 22 of the opposition, thereby giving their opponents twice as many batters in each inning. It didn’t matter; the English were embarrassingly easy victors in each match.

One of those series was held from Oct. 3-5 at the Elysian Fields in Hoboken, N.J., against a United States 22. But Creighton didn’t play in that series, much less take five wickets in rapid succession from the best players in the world. Nor was he one of the 10 Americans chosen to fill out two teams when the English stars finished their week in New Jersey by splitting their squad for a more competitive series.

John Lillywhite

Lillywhite was indeed on that team of English internationals. His brother, Fred, was also along for the trip in a “traveling secretary” role. So significant was the tour that Fred Lillywhite published a book detailing the day-to-day events of the trip, The English Cricketers’ Trip to Canada and the United States in 1859, upon his return. There is no mention of Jim Creighton.

The problem with each half of the story is the source material. Creighton’s five-wicket performance comes from the 1891 New York Clipper Annual, a sports record book of sorts, in which the event is briefly chronicled in a section on great cricket bowling feats; it identifies the match as having taken place at Hoboken in 1860. The Lillywhite quote was found in a baseball column written by veteran sportswriter William Rankin . . . in an August 5, 1911 edition of the Clipper. In other words, 50 years or so after the fact, since Rankin puts the year at 1861. Considering that Rankin was 11 years old in 1860 and didn’t start his career as a sports writer for another decade, he’s clearly getting Lillywhite’s words second- or third-hand, most likely from the great Henry Chadwick himself.

More than likely, these events did happen in some way close to how they’re described. The best candidate for Creighton’s bowling performance was an 1861 match on October 1-2 between an English 11 and an American 22, in which Creighton registered five wickets on the first seven batters, although certainly not on six successive pitches. These “English” were not professional stars from across the pond, but likely British ex-pats who formed their own club in the New York area.

As for Lillywhite’s observations? Well, it’s easy to speculate. The English all-stars competed for six days in Hoboken that fall of 1859; isn’t it likely that an up-and-coming player like Creighton would attend at least a few of those days of competition? And might he have brought a baseball with him? And perhaps, might he have given a demonstration of his pitching skill on the sidelines, either to keep in shape for the Star Club’s big game the following week against the Atlantics, or maybe just to show off a little? And isn’t it possible that Lillywhite might have walked over to see what the fuss was about, and assessed the young hurler with a cricitcal eye?

Well, it’s possible, even plausible.

What’s the point, then, of putting these stories under this kind of microscope? Certainly not to disparage the scholarship of Thorn, one of our finest historians of baseball and 19th Century sports and culture, whose book, Baseball in the Garden of Eden, is must-reading for anyone interested in the origins of the game and the jingoistic motivations of some to cast those origins as being wholly American.

No, this is more a cautionary note about trying to get a clear picture of a man like Jim Creighton, with one foot in fact and the other in legend. There are sources for much of Creighton’s on-field accomplishments, and just as much that eludes solid verification. As for a true sense of his character, that remains tantalizingly out of reach . . .

Photograph by Charles H. Williamson of Brooklyn features the Knickerbockers and Excelsiors at the Elysian Fields the year before Creighton joined the Excelsiors. Appearing in the image are some of Creighton’s future Excelsior teammates, including Henry Polhemus, A.T. Pearsall, John Holder and Ed Russell. Dr. J.B. Jones is the man in the middle, with top hat. Jones was the president of the Excelsiors and served as the umpire for this match.Brooklyn Excelsiors, 1860. From left to right: Thomas Reynolds, SS; John Whiting, 3B; Jim Creighton, P; Henry D. Polhemus, 2B; Aleck T. Pearsall, 1B; Edwin Russell, LF; Joe Leggett, C; Asa Brainard, LF; and George Flanly, CF.

In the spring of 1860, the Excelsior Club of Brooklyn was poised to ascend to the pinnacle of the baseball world. Already recognized as one of a handful of top teams, it excelled both at bat and in the field, and with Creighton now in the fold it had a weapon that could intimidate most of its foes. It had one of the finest-fielding first basemen in the game in A.T. Pearsall, a massive, slugging outfielder in Henry Pohlhemus, and talented, hard-hitting young infielders in John Holder, John Whiting and Asa Brainard.

Detail featuring Joe Leggett (left) and Asa Brainard (right).

But mostly, what it had, was Joe Leggett.

You will often see Jim Creighton referred to as baseball’s first superstar, but not necessarily its best player. That title would likely have been bestowed on Leggett, the team’s 32-year-old catcher and captain. He was one of the Association’s leading hitters and the top catcher of the day. As the club’s de facto manager, he set the tone on and off the field, drilling his players hard in practice, orchestrating the Excelsior defense from behind the plate and requiring discipline and comportment as representatives of one of the game’s most respected clubs.

It was likely his partnership with Creighton that helped the young pitcher become the best in his position at the ripe old age of 19. Catchers of the day, working without any glove, had enough trouble handling the slower offerings of most pitchers, but Leggett embraced the challenge of catching an afternoon’s worth of Creighton’s faster pitches, all the while positioning himself close behind the batter and still being able to snag the foul tips that at that time counted as an out when caught on the fly or one bounce.

Leggett’s first act upon the club’s acquisition of Creighton was to send the pitcher home with a metal sphere the size of a baseball and have him spend the winter training with it, to build his arm strength and help him attain more “pop” in his pitches once using the regulation ball. After joining the Excelsiors, Creighton developed a “dew-drop” pitch, a slow, arcing delivery to throw batters off, as a change of pace to his usual fast, rising delivery. It’s impossible not to see Leggett’s hand in the development of that strategy.

Creighton had the talent and the skill, but Leggett had the savvy and leadership to help his young protege develop into something special, just what the Excelsiors needed to accomplish their ambitious plans for 1860.

Unfortunately, the next stage of Jim Creighton’s career couldn’t have gotten off to a worse start, either for himself or his club.

In 1859, the Excelsiors opened the season against a lesser Brooklyn Club, Charter Oak. The mid-May contest – early for an era in which the baseball season didn’t really get started until the summer months – likely was seen as a training exercise, a chance to get competition better than what could be found in an intrasquad game, yet not tough enough to actually result in a loss. Several of the club’s regulars weren’t even in the lineup.

And the Excelsiors lost, 18-17.

One would think that such an occurrence would have served as a lesson not to take any opposition lightly. And one would have been mistaken.

The Excelsiors again opened their season with a game against Charter Oak a month ahead of the rest of their schedule, on May 17, 1860, with all of its regulars in the lineup and their new pitcher on the mound. For Creighton, there must have been an eerie familiarity about the game. Charter Oak had made some improvements in its lineup with a number of new players from top youth teams. Two of Creighton’s Star Club teammates – the Patchen brothers, Sam and Joe – would be facing him. And the opposing pitcher? It was John Shields, the same pitcher whom Creighton relieved for the Niagaras the previous summer, in his breakout performance against the Star Club.

The Charter Oak lead-off man, a fellow named Vanderoef, opened the game with a triple, then stole home due to a miscommunication between Creighton and Leggett. Still, the Excelsiors led, 6-2, after an inning and appeared on their way to victory.

“The superior pitching of Mr. Crayton [sic] always calls forth the applause of all,” the correspondent for the Brooklyn Evening Star reported, “from the ease and force with which the ball leaves his hand.” Despite the ease and force, however, Mr. Creighton wasn’t necessarily fooling the Charter Oak batters, and didn’t get the expected support in the field. Charter Oak led, 8-6, after five innings, and although the Excelsiors twice tied the score in the later innings, a ninth-inning rally fell a run short in a 12-11 loss. Creighton, batting lead-off, didn’t help himself any by going hitless in five at-bats.

Sadly, the details of what was apparently a dramatic finish have been lost to time, due to the lack of access for the media in that pre-pressbox era. “We are obliged to confine our remarks on the play of the game and our reference to particular details almost entirely to the first innings,” the New York Clipper reported, “for afterwards the crowd encroached so much on the ground occupied by the scorers that we were unable to see the game, except by occasional glances.”

If the Excelsiors had a full month to stew over the loss until their next game, at least they had a chance for instant vengeance, as the opponent was again Charter Oak on June 21. After two innings, the Excelsiors led, 16-0, but the beneficiary of that outburst wasn’t Creighton, but Ed Russell, who had been the Excelsiors’ starting pitcher in 1859. Creighton did enter the game in the eighth and pitched two shutout innings of relief in a 36-9 victory, but this was hardly what had been expected of baseball’s pitching wunderkind.

Fortunately, a week later, Creighton faced a familiar foe that helped right himself, and just in time.

Brooklyn’s Star Club, Creighton’s team in 1859, had for several years carried the reputation of being the “crack” youth club of its day. But the thing about youths is that they grow up and join senior clubs. Many of the youth teams of the era simply folded when their core groups of players moved on. But the Star Club had greater aspirations, and became a full member of the National Association of Base Ball Players in the winter of 1859-60. Unfortunately, there was little talent left on the club that summer after defections to bigger clubs, and the Stars finished 0-5-1 against some fairly formidable competition.

Against his former club, Creighton was masterful, shutting out the Stars through six innings as the Excelsiors built a 14-0 lead through the top of the seventh. The Star Club was able to reach him for two in the seventh and three in the eighth, but there was little doubt that the young pitcher was hitting his stride with six strikeouts in the 16-5 victory, even with the distraction of the Great Eastern coming into view from the Excelsiors’ South Brooklyn field and creating a brief intermission as fans “oohed” and “ahhed” the visiting steam ship.

And his timing was good, as Creighton and the Excelsiors were on the verge of becoming known to a wider audience.

The concept of the road trip is nothing new. What cultivated young European man in the 18th Century would believe his education was complete before taking the Grand Tour of the continent?

But baseball in its early days was an enterprise that generally took place close to home. Travel was difficult and sometimes dangerous, even for short distances. Then there was the matter of getting protracted time off from one’s job; these were amateurs, after all, who had to work for a living.

But the Excelsiors moved to expand baseball’s horizons in 1860 with an unprecedented tour – of the rest of the state. Actually, the original plan was much more ambitious: Seven cities in New York, followed by trips to Boston, Providence and New Haven and then a jaunt down to Baltimore and Washington with a stop in Philadelphia on the way back. At one point, even an excursion to Detroit was considered.

Instead, the Excelsiors embarked on a pared-down-if-still-impressive six-game tour of New York state. On July 2, they defeated Champion of Albany, 24-6, following that up with a 13-7 victory the next day over Victory in nearby Troy. They moved on to Western New York, where they defeated Niagara of Buffalo, 50-19, on July 5, followed by victories over a pair of Rochester teams, 21-1 over Flour City on July 7 and 27-9 over Live Oak two days later. The tour ended with a 59-14 defeat of Hudson River in Newburgh on July 11.

Ten days, six games, all easy victories. The details of the games aren’t particularly important, as none of the opponents had any real expectations of pulling an upset. What was important was that the Excelsiors gave fledgling teams beyond baseball’s central point of the New York metropolitan area an idea of what was possible. The precision, the comportment on and off the field, the teamwork and the skills . . . these attributes were what were remarked upon in the local press when the Excelsiors came to town.

But Creighton was the revelation.

“The fielding of the Victorys was fully equal to that of the Excelsiors,” wrote the correspondent for the Troy Daily Whig of the July 3 game, “but the skillful pitching of the latter club, resulting in the balls flying in the air and being caught, had most telling effect.” The Buffalo Daily Courier singled out Creighton and first baseman Pearsall for the play in the field against the Niagaras.

But the most interesting item that appeared in print during the week may have been the lead to the Daily Whig‘s advance of the game against Victory. “The Excelsior Club of Brooklyn” its correspondent wrote, “who have pretty well reduced base ball to a science, and who pay their pitcher $500 a year, are making a crusade through the provinces . . .”

Whoa! Let’s hold up right there. This is pretty provocative territory. It’s a published item that has been offered by historians as a part of the proof that Creighton was a paid professional. What’s most interesting is that the reporter doesn’t seem to be making an accusation of cheating as much as an assessment that the Excelsiors were taking the sport to the next evolutionary level.

What doesn’t get cited by historians is a portion of the game story that appeared in the next day’s Daily Whig, after the Excelsiors jumped out to a 10-1 lead after three innings and cruised to a deceptively close six-run victory: “Their pitcher does not receive $500 a year, but he is a splendid player.”

That’s a rather stunning non-sequitur, completely assuming that the reader has seen the article of the day before. It suggests one of two things: that the correspondent had reported rumors that the Excelsiors vigorously squelched the next day, or that he had gotten the information from someone in the Excelsior party who had not expected to see his words staring him in the face the next morning from a newspaper page, with the club then needing to enter damage control on the day of the game.

None of this proves conclusively that Creighton was receiving a salary, just that the club had no desire to be seen as blatantly flaunting the rules.

Despite the relative lack of competition, the tour was still taxing on the Excelsiors. They played as many games in a week and a half as the average team played in a month and a half. As has been noted, travel at the time could be precarious. And then there was the aspect of being feted in each new city. Part of the club culture of baseball was to host visiting teams at sumptuous banquets, filled with endless toasts. With the Excelsiors traveling out of the Brooklyn/New York area for the first time, there was also a matter of tourism.

Consider how the club spent the Fourth of July: after arriving in Buffalo at 10 a.m. on the train from Albany, club members were a few hours later taken on an excursion to Niagara Falls, for a boat ride up the Niagara River, a performance by noted French tightrope walker Charles Blondin on a rope strung 160 feet above the gorge at the base of the Falls, some quick views of said Falls and then off to the Clifton House Hotel on the Canadian side for yet another banquet.

Franklin Sidway

Its amazing the visitors from Brooklyn had anything left in their tank for the game the next day against the Niagara Club of Buffalo, unbeaten against Western New York competition. But the Excelsiors built a 44-6 lead through five innings before easing to victory. The box score of the game – courtesy of Mr. H.M. Gaylord, the Niagaras’ official scorer – was detailed enough to give some perspective on the amount of work a pitcher had to do in the days of no balls or called strikes, when a batter could simply wait for the pitch he wanted: Creighton finished with a pitch count of 244. And that was nothing compared to his opposite number, Franklin Sidway of the Niagaras, who clocked in at 354 pitches, including 115 in the 24-run Excelsior fifth inning. Certainly, the underhand delivery of the day didn’t take near as much out of the arm as today’s style, but still . . . Creighton did well at the plate, scoring six runs, but six of his teammates did just as well, including Leggett, who scored eight runs in nine at-bats, including a home run.

The Excelsiors’ game two days later in Rochester gets little attention in the grand scheme of the club’s season – the Flour City Club was hardly one of the Excelsiors’ toughest foes – but it deserves mention for one reason. Sifting through the evidence of the game’s box score, which finally made an appearance in the weekly New York Clipper three weeks after the game was played, Creighton recorded what may have been the most pristine pitching performance that had ever been seen. Flour City not only managed just a single run, but apparently had no more than four base runners and perhaps as few as three in nine innings. The only run allowed by Creighton was scored by a Mr. Avery as the leadoff batter in the second inning, but the box score allows for only one runner left on base, and a couple of putouts made at second base. Again, the level of competition wasn’t particularly high, but when you also factor in six strikeouts, you’d have to rank this as one of Creighton’s gems.

Back home in Brooklyn, there was little mention of the trip during the week in the daily newspapers, aside from the occasional bare scoreline. This wasn’t from a lack of interest as much as a limit on communications. Alexander Graham Bell was 13 years old and 16 years away from patenting the telephone. What little baseball news that got back to the big city was no doubt sent by telegraph.

But when the Excelsiors capped their tour in Newburgh, only 72 miles due north of Brooklyn, the rest of the baseball world caught up with them. Many fellow club members attended the game against Hudson River, as well as representatives of numerous other clubs.

The Clipper also sent a representative, most likely Chadwick, who gave the condition of the grounds a failing grade. This likely contributed to the ragged nature of the game, in which 73 runs were scored. Apparently, it wasn’t the pitcher’s fault. “It was Creighton’s pitching that told with such effect,” the Clipper reported, “the scores that were obtained [by Hudson River] . . . being the result of poor fielding . . .” Creighton also had a career day at the plate, scoring 10 runs without being put out once.

Creighton and his Excelsior teammates returned home on July 12 as conquering heroes, although the real triumph was not in the stature of the beaten foes as it was in expanding the club’s brand and showing other areas of the state, in which love of the sport was quickly growing, the level of sophistication that could be accomplished.

They also returned with sore fingers and hands from their 1,000-mile journey, not a good thing considering that in a week’s time they would take the field for the most important game of the year. Fatigue did not prove to be a problem, however, as Creighton was about to reach the apex of his standing in the baseball world.

Baseball championships, in the early days, were a subjective affair. Whether you were talking about city championships or national championships (which in Brooklyn was pretty much the same thing), there was initially no apparatus in place for determining a champion. There were no standings; teams played schedules that were wildly different in length and level of competition. But one thing was certain: any discussion of who was best, or who a team needed to beat to become the best, started with the Atlantics of Brooklyn.

The Atlantic Club formed in 1855, at a time when three New York clubs, the Knickerbockers, Gotham and Eagle, dominated the fledgling sport. Within two years, it had built itself into the team to beat, and with a 7-1-1 record, it was generally acclaimed the top team. The Atlantics were unbeaten in seven games in 1858, but didn’t play either the Mutuals or the Empires, a pair of one-loss teams.

It wasn’t until 1859 that the Association recognized a method for claiming a championship. That season, the Atlantics split a pair of games with their strongest Brooklyn rival, the Eckfords, then defeated the Eckfords in a rubber match, 22-12, on October 12. Two days later, the Atlantics defeated the Mutuals, 15-5, to cap a two-game sweep of the top New York contender. At 11-1, they had a record no other team could touch and were recognized as national champion. Plus, a precedent was set for determining a title.

Though a national champion would be recognized at the end of each season through 1870, the title was not won through a season-long portfolio of results but rather through head-to-head match play. The holders would accept a challenge to play a home-and-home series with another club; if the two teams split the games, a deciding game would be played on a neutral field, with the winner claiming the championship. The only other rule was that the series had to be completed within a single calendar year.

This was the ultimate aim of the Excelsiors in bringing a talent like Jim Creighton on board, to take the championship away from the Atlantics, and the two clubs had agreed to begin their series on July 19 at the Excelsiors’ Court Street grounds in South Brooklyn. The Excelsiors’ very recent successes in upstate New York had fueled what was already a great interest in the showdown, sparked by both the merits and the contrasts of the two teams.

There was a certain class distinction in baseball of the mid-19th Century, not particularly surprising when one considers that these were gentlemen’s club that engaged in social entertainment beyond just the baseball field. The Knickerbockers and their ilk, while fine-tuning the rules of the game, had been more about fellowship and exercise than heated competition. But in the wake of the forming of the National Association and the growing interest in the game as a spectator sport (and a vehicle for wagering), winning become more important.

The Excelsiors represented the new breed of “gentleman” clubs, their membership still largely from the white-collar world, but also determined to field the best team. The Atlantics were known as a “working man’s” club, with membership more likely to come from blue-collar pursuits. The crowds they drew had on occasion been known to get a bit out of hand.

But there was no question as to the quality of the Atlantics on the field. They featured some of the finest players of the day.

Leading the team were the O’Brien brothers, Peter and Mattie. Peter was a hard-hitting outfielder who was a mainstay of the club for nine seasons. His brother was one of the top pitchers of the day, and started on the mound for the Brooklyn team in the 1858 Fashion Course all-star series against New York. In Charley Smith, they had a clutch hitter and the man that Harry Wright himself proclaimed “the king of third basemen.” At shortstop was 24-year-old Dickey Pearce, an innovator both at bat – he gets credit, whether accurately or not, for developing the bunt as an offensive weapon – and in the field, and would play at the top levels of baseball for another 17 seasons.

The Brooklyn Atlantics, 1865

Beyond having talent at every position, the Atlantics were the greatest team of their era in the clutch. Their late-inning rallies were legendary, often crushing a lesser team’s hopes just when that team thought it was going to spring an upset. Just a few weeks earlier, they had fallen behind the Putnam Club of Brooklyn, 10-8, heading into the eighth inning. But a couple of singles and a Putnam error cut the deficit to one run before Pearce slammed a ball down the leftfield line and circled the bases for a three-run home run, leading the way to a 14-11 Atlantics victory.

Of all teams, it was never more true than with the Atlantics that the game wasn’t over until the last man was out.

Is it any wonder that a crowd of more than 10,000, certainly the largest since the Fashion Course games two years earlier, descended on the Excelsior Club’s grounds on July 19?

It’s not easy to pinpoint the high point of an athletic career, even one as brief as that of Jim Creighton, but it’s hard to top this moment, shortly after 3 p.m. on an oppressively hot afternoon in South Brooklyn.

Creighton took the mound with a 2-0 lead – in 1860, it was the practice for the home team to bat first and cede the last-to-bat advantage to its guests – and faced Peter O’Brien, who fouled off a couple of pitches before striking out. Tice Hamilton followed with a high foul tip into the hands of Joe Leggett. Dickey Pearce watched several pitches before finding one he liked, which he popped up in foul territory to A.T. Pearsall at first base. Very quickly, Creighton had mowed down the top of the order of baseball’s reigning champion, setting the tone for the day.

Jim Creighton, pitching for the Excelsiors, from woodcut.

Creighton was nothing short of brilliant in the Excelsiors’ 23-4 victory, the worst loss ever experienced by the Atlantics. We have a clear picture of what happened that day because the New York Times published a full play-by-play, a distinct rarity back in the day, but one certainly warranted, given the importance of the game.

Creighton allowed only nine hits. Two of the four runs he allowed were unearned, owing to a bad day in the field by Excelsior third baseman John Whiting, who had three errors but made up for it by scoring five runs himself without being put out. Only Charlie Smith truly solved Creighton’s swift pitching, with four hits.

Only two Atlantic batters struck out, but nine were put out on foul tips to Leggett behind the plate. Creighton retired the side in order in the first, fourth and ninth innings, each time without a ball leaving the infield. In the seventh inning, after the Atlantics had scored twice and had runners on first and third with none out, Creighton induced Frank Seinsoth and O’Brien to tip out to Leggett, then got Hamilton on a bound out to Ed Russell in left field to end the threat.

And if that wasn’t enough, the young pitcher hit a thundering two-run triple in the fourth to give the Excelsiors a 12-1 lead.

It was about the most complete performance for which one could ask, performed on the biggest stage ever. “Creighton also placed himself at the head of the list as a ball player, especially as a pitcher,” the New York Clipper reported. The Times was more exuberant: “To Creighton, the pitcher, must be awarded the highest praise, his pitching being the theme of universal commendation both for its swiftness and regularity. He has well earned the reputation of the most effective pitcher in this region.” And therefore, the baseball world as a whole . . .

All things considered, the Atlantics took the shellacking fairly well. Oddly, their first-string pitcher, Mattie O’Brien, had started the game at third base, before relieving John Price in the fifth inning. But it made no difference; the Excelsiors hit both pitchers hard.

The newspapers lauded both teams for their sportsmanship, and praised the Excelsior management for keeping the peace with such a large crowd on hand. The Clipper correspondent (almost certainly Chadwick, the dean of 19th Century sportswriters) commented, “Above all we do select the gentlemanly conduct of the respective contestants throughout the match, and the prompt manner in which all outside comments were suppressed, as being worthy of the highest commendation . . . . We were also gratified in noticing that the decisions of the Umpire were promptly and silently acquiesced in, in every instance, and we trust this notable example will be followed on all like occasions.”

Sadly, Henry would soon have to eat those words.

Coming Soon:

Part 3: A bitter aftertaste to a heralded season.

Sources:

Baseball in the Garden of Eden by John ThornJim Creighton by John Thorn (SABR bio project at sabr.org)Inventing Baseball: The 100 Greatest Games of the Nineteenth Century, edited by Bill Felber of the SABR Nineteenth Century CommitteeBaseball’s First Inning by William J. RyczekBaseball Founders by Craig B. Waff, William J. Ryczek and Peter MorrisThe National Association of Baseball Players, 1857-70 by Marshall D. WrightThe English Cricketers’ Trip to Canada and the United States in 1859 by Fred Lillywhite
Digital editions of the New York Clipper, the New York Times, the Brooklyn Eagle, the Brooklyn Evening Star, the Troy Daily White and the Buffalo Daily Courier

Among those with an interest in the earliest days of baseball, he is famous both for his exploits on the field, and for the fact that the vast majority of sports fandom is completely unaware of those feats. He was a great hitter, a great fielder and a revolutionary pitcher, and he was the focal point of the 1860 season, the year baseball took the final leap from a diversion for gentlemen’s social clubs to the chief concern of sports fanatics in the East. As a standout in cricket as well, he may have been, for a brief time, the nation’s finest athlete. If he wasn’t the very best baseball player in the nation, he was certainly the first superstar, perhaps the first individual player that could draw a crowd on his own. He may also have been the first professional player.

But for all his accomplishments, there is precious little we can know about Jim Creighton. For most players, a simple recitation of on-the-field performances would suffice, but Creighton made choices in his all-too-brief career that make one yearn to know more. His character remains a blank slate to us, and that’s really no surprise. There was so little time to get to know him. He passed away in a Bunyon-esque manner, at 21 years, six months and three days of age.

To appreciate Creighton’s quick rise from relative anonymity to stardom, one needs to understand the organization of baseball in its earliest days. Games of ball and bat have been around almost as far back as we can document human social history. In the United States, the phrase “base ball” turns up half a century earlier than 1839, when Abner Doubleday didn’t invent baseball at Cooperstown, N.Y. The British game of “rounders” or variations of “cat” had been played for years by children or at rural holiday gatherings.

But it was the 19th Century version of yuppies, the young urban professionals of New York, who developed a game that was something more than a diversion for children. It became the fashion for city workers in the early decades of the century to seek out a healthful form of organized recreation, and if it allowed for socializing with one’s peers, so much the better.

A handful of clubs began to spring up around the idea, with names like Gotham and Eagle. And finally, there were the Knickerbockers, who formed in 1845. The Knickerbockers weren’t necessarily the best players (they lost history’s first recorded game, 23-1, to the New York Ball Club in 1846) but their true genius was in organization. Behind such leaders as William Wheaton, Duncan Curry, Doc Adams and Alexander Cartwright, they took charge of codifying the rules of what was know as the “New York game,” a version of bat-and-ball that eventually won out over other regional variations.

For years, the Knickerbockers’ role as “keepers of the rules” was accepted by other clubs, but as the game grew in the mid-’50s, a larger form of organization was needed. In 1957, sixteen clubs from New York, Brooklyn and Morissania (the present-day Bronx) came together to form the National Association of Base Ball Players. These were social clubs that included many more members than just the nine who represented each club on the field. Some were more erudite, some were more working class, but they had banded together to compete at the highest level.

Of course, the game was bound to be popular with men too young to join a social club, and this led to a growing underclass of youth teams. In that summer of ’57, Jim Creighton was a 16-year-old growing up in Brooklyn, and had shown promise in both baseball and cricket. He and some neighborhood friends started their own team with the grandiose name of Young America. Playing mostly intrasquad games, Young America disbanded by the end of the year, but Creighton’s services were snapped up by the Niagara Club, another local youth team.

Such youth teams competed at a level below those of the senior clubs, but they received a surprising amount of attention from the fledgling sports media. For instance, the July 24, 1858 edition of the New York Clipper had extensive coverage of the first game in the Fashion Course series, an all-star competition pitting the best players from New York clubs against those of Brooklyn clubs, the first major “event” in the sport’s history. In an adjacent column was coverage of the Niagara Club’s 39-31 loss to Sylvan, in which third baseman J. Creighton scored four runs.

But although youth teams were theoretically equal, some were more equal than others. For an aspiring player like Creighton, the Niagara Club trumped Young America. And there was a higher level yet . . .

On July 19, 1859, one of the most significant games in the history of baseball’s development was played. A large crowd was on hand at the grounds of the Olympic Club in South Brooklyn to see the Star Club take on the Niagara Club.

The attraction was the Stars, considered the “crack” junior club of the area. While youth teams had a tendency to come and go, the Star Club had maintained its core group for several seasons, and though still made up of teenagers, it was showing evidence of being able to compete with any club in the area. It had opened the season with victories over Charter Oak, a senior team, and Hamilton of Jersey City. The latter game was played on the same day as a marquee battle between heavyweights Atlantic and Eckford, which kept the Stars’ crowd down, but there was no such competition for the attention of the baseball world when they squared off against the Niagaras. The New York Times reported that “an unusually large audience, numbering representatives from almost every New-York and Brooklyn Club, were gratified spectators of the well-contested game.”

Apparently, everyone wanted to know if the Star Club was for real. What they saw, however, was even more enlightening.

Legend has it that with the Stars well ahead in the fifth inning, Creighton took over on the mound for Niagara’s starter, John Shields. It may not have been Creighton’s first turn as a pitcher in a competitive game, but it was certainly the first time he had been seen by a large audience. One of the players in attendance was Peter O’Brien, a star outfielder for the Atlantics, and he observed that “when Creighton got to work, something new was seen in base ball — a low, swift delivery, the ball rising from the ground past the shoulder to the catcher.”

To understand why this was a revelation, one must consider the rules of the time, and the role of a pitcher. A pitch was to be delivered in an underhand motion with a stiff arm and a stiff wrist. The batter was allowed to call for a low or high pitch, and if it didn’t come within that area, he didn’t have to swing. The pitcher-batter confrontation that defines the modern game had not yet been established. The focus was not on pitching or even hitting, but rather on fielding. In a sense, the pitcher and batter were charged with conspiring to put the ball into play. A pitcher’s role was roughly the same as a plunger on a pinball table.

Creighton was not the first pitcher to throw a speedy pitch, but, given the limitations of the rules, he may have been the first to do so with any degree of control.

According to legend, the Stars were so befuddled by Creighton’s offerings that they countered by putting their wildest pitcher on the mound, counting on the Niagaras inability to catch up. The Star Club left the field with a 14-8 victory, but some of the leading lights in the world of baseball had seen the sport’s future.

Now, why do I say “according to legend?” Unfortunately, none of the details can be verified by contemporary reports. The Clipper‘s story of the game lauds Creighton’s play . . . at second base! It also credits Shields with being “pretty active” as pitcher. But there is no comment in any publication on Creighton’s pitching efforts. The Stars actually led by only 8-4 when Creighton took the mound, and he hardly shut them down from that point.

The main source of what happened that day — and the O’Brien “observation,” which wasn’t strictly a quote — came from a biographical essay that appeared on the back of a carte de visite of Creighton in pitching motion, that was apparently written a decade after the fact. The card, which may have been an early trade card issued by Peck and Snyder Sporting Goods, and was discovered in a photo archive by historians John Thorn and Mark Rucker.

Can it be trusted? Hard to say . . . given the events that followed, the story makes sense, and seems to have been accepted as reasonably accurate. But like many things that pop up in Creighton’s brief moment in the sun, one has to take it with a grain of salt.

Clearly, the Star Club was impressed, and saw the potential that Creighton represented. The Stars’ next game didn’t take place for another six and a half weeks, and during that time Creighton played once more for the Niagaras (a game in which he was listed as the starting pitcher and was summarily thumped, 28-11, by a youth club called Champion). But when the Star Club took the field on Sept. 3 against the vaunted Excelsiors, he was in the lineup, on the mound.

The Star Club came away with a 17-12 victory, a stunning victory over one of baseball’s top clubs. Even more impressive was the Stars’ 7-3 lead after seven innings . . . a team the caliber of the Excelsiors scoring only three runs in seven innings was unheard of. A particularly detailed play-by-play account of the game by the Clipper gave the defense on both sides most of the credit (until the final two innings, when both teams fell apart in the field), but made little mention of Creighton’s pitching. Still, he had clearly made an impression on the Excelsiors, and others were paying attention as well.

The Knickerbockers next challenged the Star Club to a “fly” game. No longer the sole arbiter of the game’s rules, the Knickerbockers still took it upon themselves to champion the elimination of the “bound” out. At the time, a batter could be put out either by having his fly ball caught, or by the fielder catching it on one bounce. In an attempt to create support for eliminating the bound, the Knickerbockers sponsored exhibition games in which an out could only be made on the fly (or by the usual throwing out of a batter before he could get to first base).

Ten days after beating the Excelsiors, the Star Club hosted the Knickerbockers. “The pitching of Creighton . . . rather surprised them,” according to game coverage in Porter’s Spirit of the Times, “his speed and accuracy telling on their batting with considerable effect.” Creighton held the venerable Knicks to three runs in four innings before rain stopped the game. In a replay two weeks later, the Stars won easily, 33-11.

Following two more victories, the Star Club was unbeaten through six games headed for a game with the recognized champions of Brooklyn, and, therefore, the baseball world: the Atlantics. When the teams met at the Star Club’s Penny Bridge grounds on Oct. 8, the New York Sunday Mercury reported that “Creighton’s pitching somewhat worried the Atlantics,” but the game was suspended with the Atlantics leading, 6-5, in the fourth. The Atlantics returned 11 days later and broke open an 11-11 tie after seven innings to hand the Star Club its first defeat, 15-12.

After defeating Charter Oak on Nov. 10, the Stars finished their season 7-1, and with a solid lineup and a pitching prodigy on hand, the opportunity was ripe for the youth club to graduate to the ranks of Brooklyn’s, and therefore baseball’s, finest teams.

But it didn’t come to pass. Soon after the Stars’ final game on Nov. 10, the Excelsiors announced that Creighton and George Flanley were joining their ranks. In just two years, Creighton had risen from a small-time youth team to the pinnacle of baseball in the mid-19th Century.

It was this last step up the ladder that started the rumors. Going from the neighborhood Young America to the better-organized Niagara Club made sense, as did the next jump to the Star Club, the leading youth team of its day. But a move to the Excelsiors led many to the conclusion that Jim Creighton was being paid under the table.

1860 Excelsiors with Creighton third from left

There was, of course, no other way of being paid to play baseball in 1860 than clandestinely; it was an amateur sport. There were other ways of skirting the rules, though: waiver of club dues, the giving of a patronage job, the handing over of a portion of gate receipts. But the rumor about Creighton was always that we was directly paid for playing. The figure of $500 often shows up in biographies of the young pitcher.

There is no evidence to categorically prove that Creighton was a paid professional . . . indeed, the first paid professional. But in hindsight, there’s every reason to believe it was true.

For one thing, if the Excelsiors chose or needed to pay him, they could. No one accused the Star Club of buying Creighton away from the Niagaras, because there was no way for a group of teenagers to come up with that kind of money. But there was plenty of money in the Excelsior Club membership, which in numbers extended well beyond the nine or 10 players on the baseball first team.

There are arguments that can be made for and against Creighton making the move without financial remuneration. In the early days of organized baseball, senior clubs and youth teams often had working arrangements. For the youth team, there might be social benefits as well as the use of a playing field or equipment; for the larger club, a good youth team could be a supplier of new talent. It happened that the Excelciors and Stars had just such an informal arrangement. In fact, one of the reasons that the Star Club had pursued Creighton in the first place was because it had just lost two of its starters to the Excelsiors.

On the other hand, the Star Club wasn’t just any youth team. It had aspirations to officially join the ranks of the senior clubs and did indeed join the NABBP in early 1860. It would have no desire to lose its new star pitcher.

This is likely one of those cases in which the fact that most people believed that Creighton had been paid probably meant that he had. To our 21st Century sensibilities, this is no big deal, and in fact no one went to any pains to try to have Creighton declared ineligible.

But if he did indeed take pay to play, that act was perhaps as significant as those speedballs he’d thrown across the plate that summer afternoon in 1859. It marked the crossing over for baseball, from a social apparatus for the largely well-to-do, to an enterprise that was drawing attention and interest, from fans and those who wanted to wager alike. Competition was sharpening, and the clubs near the top were going to do whatever it took to compete with those who were on top.

One side note to Creighton’s move was his transaction companion, Flanley. They had been teammates on the Niagaras, and moved together to the Star Club, then the Excelsiors. Flanley was a slight fellow — he was 5-foot-6 and weighed less than 150 pounds — with a reputation as a fine fielder and a weak hitter. According to the game account in the Clipper, he did make at least two outstanding plays in the field during the Stars’ victory over the Excelsiors, which might have stirred the latter club’s interest. And he was a regular in the Excelsior lineup through 1867. But it’s hard not to believe that his primary role was as Jim Creighton’s BFF.

Whatever the case, they were both in place as the Excelsiors prepared to set sail on the most heralded baseball season that had ever been seen.

1860 Excelsior and Atlantic Clubs with Creighton on the Mound

Coming Soon:

Part 2: The invention of the baseball tour, and a championship series to remember.

Sources:

Baseball in the Garden of Eden by John ThornJim Creighton by John Thorn (SABR bio project at sabr.org)Baseball’s First Inning by William J. RyczekBaseball Founders by Craig B. Waff, William J. Ryczek and Peter MorrisThe National Association of Baseball Players, 1857-70 by Marshall D. WrightHidden Treasure Discovered in NYPL’s Spalding Collection: The Mystery of Baseball’s First Star — Jim Creighton by Peter J. Nash, April 5, 2011 blog post at haulsofshhame.com
Digital editions of the New York Clipper and New York Times

One day in 1970, a customer walked into a Boston bookshop and inquired of two men working there about purchasing a book about baseball cards. When Brendan Boyd and Fred Harris realized there was no such book that they could sell, they eventually came to the conclusion that they should write that book themselves.

So, armed with no writing experience, a few contacts in the publishing world and a stack of baseball cards, they did just that.

The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book, published in 1973 and several times afterward, was an instant classic. It was also one of the most significant books about the hobby, because it was less about baseball cards and more about the experience of growing up as a baby boomer in the ’50s and ’60s. Baseball and collecting baseball cards were an essential part of that experience. With wit, warmth and more than a little snarkiness, Boyd and Harris returned a generation of grown-up collectors back to the hobby of their youth.

The book was divided into three parts, opening with a reminiscence of a baseball-card-driven childhood in the ’50s, followed by a visit with Sy Berger and an impromptu history of Topps at its corporate offices, and ending with the heart of the book, “Profiles.” The two authors divvied up their baseball cards and wrote a string of essays inspired by them, Boyd handling the American League and Harris the National. Some of the pieces were about the specific card, some were about the specific player pictures, others were on themes inspired by the pasteboard art. Some were a page long, some were a single line, but just about anyone who owned the book will tell you they’ve gone back again and again to re-read this or that portion of it.

And there was one entry in particular that stuck with me.

It was devoted to Gus Zernial of the Philadelphia Athletics and his card in the 1952 Topps set. Maybe you know the card, but reading the book as a teenager in the ’70s, I’d never come across it. But it’s one of those cards that makes your jaw drop. There’s Gus, holding his bat in his right hand . . . with six baseballs attached to its barrel, looking like the branch of a particularly robust fruit tree. Meanwhile, Gus has the thumb and forefinger of his left hand shaped in a circle with his other fingers unfurled, in the universal language of A-O-K.

If you sort through a pile of cards featuring portraits, posed pitching shots and players with their bats on their shoulders, this one would stand out every time.

Boyd, in his analysis, was just as gobsmacked:

This is one of my all-time favorite cards. How do you suppose they got those baseballs to stay up there anyway? Nails? Scotch tape? Postage stamp hinges?

And why do you think Gus is giving us the high sign? Is he trying to assure us that everything is OK? Is he trying to indicate to us that he thinks the Athletics are a big zero? Does he want a cinnamon doughnut to go?

And why is he wearing a pink undershirt?

And what the hell is it supposed to mean, anyway?

Boyd goes on to point out that Zernial was one of the class of bulky sluggers of Eastern European ancestry that seemed to dot the roster of just about every American League team in the 1950s. Beyond that, he had little explanation about what Gus and his baseball tree were all about.

Didn’t matter . . . I thought it was one of the neatest, most surreal things I’d ever seen come out of a wax wrapper with a slab of gum. I had to have a copy . . . but this being the pre-Internet era, you couldn’t just go on to eBay and do a “Buy It Now” purchase.

About 10 years later, I found a placeholder in my collection for the Zernial card: In 1983, Topps went to great lengths, trouble and expense to do an official reprint of the 1952 set, an effort that pretty much fell flat. Within a year, Topps was trying to unload the balance of the product for $25 a set through a national advertisement in USA Today. Three decades later, the unopened sets are finally pretty valuable. The Zernial card looked good, but the reprint set was on thin stock and sized at modern dimensions. It just wasn’t the same as the thick, larger-sized originals.

I finally got my ’52 Zernial another couple of decades later, on one of the rare West Coast appearances by the National Card Collectors Convention. There it was, just sitting on a dealer’s table in reasonably good condition for a reasonable price. It’s held an honored place in my collection ever since.

The reality behind hobby legends like this aren’t usually as interesting as the speculation, but the true story of the Zernial card is kind of instructive.

In May of 1951, Zernial had only been in Philadelphia for a few weeks, having been acquired by the Athletics from the Chicago White Sox in an early-season trade for Minnie Minoso. The A’s were finishing up a home series with the Yankees on Sunday, May 13, and Zernial hit a pair of home runs, off Spec Shea and Fred Sanford. After a day off, the St. Louis Browns rolled into town, and in the series opener Zernial had a first-inning, inside-the-park home run off Dick Starr and added another shot in the ninth, off Ned Garver. On Wednesday, he victimized Cliff Fannin and Duane Pillette.

By now, Gus was getting plenty of attention, and on Thursday an enterprising photographer from a wire service arranged to shoot a picture to commemorate Zernial’s feat of six home runs in three games. The secret of how the balls were attached to the bat has apparently been lost to the ages. Epoxy? Elmer’s Glue? Contact cement? Alas, we’ll probably never know, but the picture was taken and sent out on the wires to be used by newspapers all over the baseball-playing world.

For good measure, Zernial went out that day and hit his seventh home run in four games, off the Browns’ Don Johnson. He added 26 more over the course of the season and led the American League with 33 home runs.

Topps’ 1952 set was ground-breaking, much larger than the company’s small inaugural set of the previous year, bigger-sized cards than had ever been seen and real color photos . . . well, colorized black and white photos. Needless to say, the Brooklyn company didn’t have a battalion of photographers at that point, so a number of pictures used had been bought by photographers shooting for the wire services. And that’s how Gus, his baseball-bearing bat and his pink undershirt, ended up in the most famous set of the latter half of the 20th Century.

About that undershirt . . . why pink? As you can see, the original picture was black and white . . . apparently someone at Topps’ art department must have thought that the pink complemented the other colors in the . . .

Waaaaait a minute . . . it just occurred to me . . . all of those attractive maroon, scarlet and garnet ties that are featured on players in Ars Longa’s Pioneer Portrait II series, was that all just an aesthetic decision by Jesse to add some vibrancy to a stuffy pose? Huh! Well, they look great . . .

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So why am I taking up so much space talking about a 60-something-year-old baseball card on a site devoted to art cards of the early days of professional baseball? It’s because for the longest time, I thought that 1952 Topps Gus Zernial was the coolest card ever. Until recently . . .

Ladies and Gentlemen, let me introduce to you Mr. John Emmett Seery, originally of Princeville, IL, lately (well, as of 1887) of Indianapolis, IN, And his friend, Mr. Bat, originally of Louisville, KY (probably), and also lately of Indianapolis.

I will admit that the first time I laid eyes, briefly, on Emmett Seerey’s The Beginnings: 1880s card, I didn’t notice it. It was early on in my introduction to Ars Longa, and I spent a lot of time on the web site, surfing through image after fantastic image of Old Judge photographic subjects turned into colorful, pastoral presentations of the ballplayers of the day. Maybe I noticed it on a second go-around.

But there he is, standing in an Ars Longa-generated field, arms crossed, a disinterested — almost annoyed — look on his face, replete in red stockings and a plaid Indianapolis cap. And there, standing next to him, is his bat.

There’s no way that doesn’t make a person smile. Whether it’s the complete denouncement of balance and/or gravity, or the elevation of a piece of equipment to a starring role, that’s just way cool.

Cards like that of Seerey are examples of what the photographers who took the pictures for the Old Judge card sets were able to accomplish. It’s not overstating things to say that they created the modern baseball card pose.

Consider what had come before: portraits and team shots. Photographers either lined the whole squad up for a group picture, or took portraits of the manner used in the making of Ars Longa’s Pioneer Portraits II set. Sometimes portraits were taken of each member of a team and then cobbled together as a composite team picture.

The creators of the Old Judge set, whether an art director at Goodwin and Co. or the photographers themselves (Goodwin employed 18 different photo studios in the East and the Midwest from 1886-89), seem to have understood that baseball was inherently an action-filled subject. I know, I know, that’s not something of which baseball gets accused in this day and age, but it is inherently full of motion. The Old Judge photographers, using what they had at their disposal in their studios, represented that motion: players moving into position to make a catch, sliding into a base, getting ready to swing a bat or pitch a ball. Sometimes those balls were clearly hanging from a string in the studio, but it’s the effort that counts. Sometimes the pictures featured two players, acting out a slide into a base, or an umpire’s call.

A hundred years later, that form of “posed action” was still the presentation of choice in the world of baseball cards. It’s the kind of pose that collectors who grew up with Topps in the ’50s and ’60s came to associate with their little pasteboard tickets into the world of major league baseball.

The Old Judge photographers (or at least one of them) had a sense of humor as well. The Seery card is the best example, but there were others as well. Paul Hines had a version of his Old Judge cards featuring the same pose that Seery adopted, with a gravity defying bat and a look on his face that suggested nothing out of the ordinary was happening. Art Whitney posed with a puppy. And lanky John Reilly and diminutive Hugh Nicol, teammates on the 1887 Cincinnati Red Stockings, were brought together for a Mutt-and-Jeff pose labelled “Long and Short.”

That doesn’t even include the unintentionally humorous pictures of ball players trying to mimic actual play by holding a stilted pose in a studio.

As for Seery himself, it’s possible that this pose is for what he’s most famous (keeping in mind that “fame” here is a very relative term). As a player, he’s only known by baseball fans that have deep interest in the 19th Century. Which is a shame because, as ordinary a player as he might have been, he was actually something of a Renaissance Man. He played chess, was a musician and sometimes acted in light opera during his offseasons in Indianapolis.

On the field, Seery’s career was constantly shifting between up and down. A fleet-footed outfielder, he got his big-league break with Baltimore in the Union Association in 1884, leading his team with a .311 batting average. But the UA folded after a year. The following year, he turned up with the National League’s St. Louis Maroons, and in 1886 led the NL in both games played (128) and strikeouts (82).

The Maroons moved to Indianapolis for the 1887 season and Seery responded with three solid years. His batting average was still anemic the first two years, but he had a solid on-base percentage as one of the league leaders in walks. In 1888, he stole 80 bases, two fewer than league-leader Dummy Hoy of Washington. The following season, he broke through with a .314 batting average.

Seery’s career took a downturn in 1890, however, which is strange given that talent was at a premium that season with three major leagues. John Ward, in stocking his own Players League team in Brooklyn, filled his outfield entirely with players from Indianapolis – Seery, Jack McGeachey and Ed Andrews. None of the three could break .253 at bat, with Seery the worst at .223, but at least he had an excuse: he missed 30 games due to a bout with malaria.

The Players League folded after one year, and Seery found himself in Cincinnati in 1891, where he batted a solid .285. The American Association itself was no longer solid, however, and it folded at the end of the season. When Seery failed to hit with the Louisville Colonels the following season, he was released at midseason and that ended his major league career.

After his days in baseball, Seery moved to Florida and owned a pineapple plantation. He died in 1930, in Saranc Lake, NY, the famed tuberculosis sanitarium where Christy Mathewson also spent his last days. And what we’re left with is the impression of a man who had a sense of humor suitable to pose with a bat as his companion.

Silly, perhaps, but it’s supposed to be fun, right? And a little light-hearted? To the modern eye, the Old Judge set may look a bit cheesy, with its stock studio backgrounds and it’s horsehides hung with string. But what it accomplished, even if unintentionally, was to create an iconic style for picture cards of famous athletes. Some 138 years later, it still hits all the right notes.

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Sources:Major League Baseball Profiles, 1871-1900, Volume 1 by David NemecThe Photographic Baseball Cards of Goodwin and Company (1886-90) by Jay Miller, Joe Gonsowski and Richard Masson

“The first thing I look for in the Sunday papers is who is below the Gerhardt line.” — George Brett

Okay, Brett didn’t really say that. It’s likely that George Brett has never heard of Joe Gerhardt, never knew how the second sacker’s anemic batting totals on occasion could make Mario Mendoza appear to be as accomplished a hitter as . . . well, George Brett.

Brett was of course referring to Mendoza, a light-hitting middle infielder whose Seattle Mariners’ teammates Tom Paciorek and Bruce Bochte had originated that batting demarcation, as the level below which no self-respecting batsman would want to fall. Mendoza was a career .215 hitter, but in 1979, his first year with the Mariners, he played in 148 games and hit .198, suggesting that the true focus of the Mendoza Line was in separating those who batted .200 or higher, and those who hit less.

But Mendoza had nothing on Joe Gerhardt.

Even in a gloveless era when a middle infielder’s lack of clout was glossed over if he could catch the ball, Gerhardt was a cut above . . . or a cut below, depending on your point of view. He was seemingly the man they had in mind when, years later, the phrase “Good field, no hit” came into vogue.

But as is often the case with players whose careers are reduced to a single meme, Gerhardt’s story is a lot more interesting the more you know. He actually had a better career average than Mendoza, .227-.215, but he mixed some significant highs with some historic lows. A player like Gerhardt is often seen as getting by on his glove (all the more remarkable in the days before fielders wore gloves), but his 21-year professional career likely was predicated on more than just some fancy fielding.

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John Joseph Gerhardt was a first-generation American, born on Feb. 14, 1855 in Washington D.C. to Prussian and German immigrant parents. His father served as a general in the Union Army during the Civil War, and Joe grew up playing the budding National Pastime in the national’s capital. He got his professional start locally, playing a handful of games for the Washington club in the National Association in 1873 and a handful more for Baltimore in 1874, before joining the New York Mutuals as their regular third baseman the following season.

Gerhardt was there at the beginning of the National League in 1876 and, for a few seasons, appeared to be a star on the rise. He played for Louisville in the NL’s inaugural season, as the Grays’ first basemen, batting a solid .260 with 15 extra-base hits in 65 games. The following season, he moved to second base full time, leading the league in chances per game and finishing second in fielding percentage. He hit .304, the second best average on the Grays, while driving in a team-high 35 runs. As a 22-year-old, he was on the top of his game.

And he couldn’t have found himself in a worse place in the baseball world.

Louisville contended with Boston for the title for much of the year, until a late-season swoon that sent up red flags around the league. An investigation led to the discovery of key players on the Grays being paid to throw the pennant, and eventually star pitcher Jim Devlin and George Hall, Louisville’s top hitter, confessed to being part of the scheme. They were banned from the league for life, along with Bill Craver, a veteran “hard man” who proclaimed his innocence, but played most of his career under the cloud of suspicion of dumping games; and Al Nichols, the substitute who had been the go-between with the gamblers backing the plan. Decimated, the Louisville team dropped out of the league.

Gerhardt had no trouble catching on with another team, signing with Cincinnati. In 1878, he joined a lineup that included future Hall-of-Famers Mike “King” Kelly and Deacon White, slugger Charley Jones and hard-hitting Cal McVey, who nine years earlier had been a youngster on the unbeaten Cincinnati Red Stockings, baseball’s first professional team. With Gerhardt batting .297 and ranking second in fielding only to Boston’s Jack Burdock among National League second basemen, the Reds made a run at the pennant, only losing by four games to Boston’s Red Caps.

But suddenly, Joe Gerhardt’s ability to hit deserted him. It’s impossible to tell why; the official rules were tinkered with almost every year during those early seasons, but no major changes were made in the offseason of 1878-79. What we know for sure is that Gerhardt’s average dropped 99 points in one year, to .198, with only 22 runs scored in 79 games.

It perhaps wasn’t difficult for the Reds to cut loose their light-hitting second baseman as the scapegoat, but it turned out to be another instance of Gerhardt escaping a sinking ship. Kelly left for Chicago, McVey retired at the end of the season, White was a holdout and missed the first half of the 1880 season, and Pop Smith, hired to replace Gerhardt at second, batted an anemic .207. The Reds finished dead last, and in an attempt to make some extra money, they rented out their park to local semipro teams on Sundays and permitted them to sell beer, both against National League rules. In the offseason, the Reds were booted out of the league, and the National League wouldn’t have a representative from the Queen City for another 12 years.

Gerhardt, on the other hand, simply went home. In 1880, he played for the Nationals of Washington in the National Association. But this was not the National Association of a few years earlier, baseball’s first legitimate major league. This was a four-team independent East Coast league. It’s one claim to fame is that Washington, after winning the league title, bested the NL champion Chicago White Stockings in a best-of-seven postseason series, the details of which appear to have been lost to time. Even against lesser competition, Gerhardt could only manage a .204 batting average.

Detroit, which had been awarded Cincinnati’s spot in the National League, signed Gerhardt for the 1881 season. He played well in the field, batted a reasonable .242 and the Wolverines finished a surprising fourth in the standings. But the American Association began play the following year, and Gerhardt apparently wanted to relive his glory days in Louisville, with the new AA franchise. When Detroit turned down his request for a release, he chose instead to sit out the season. Given that the National League owners were exerting more and more control over the players, this may not have been the best move, as he was blacklisted by the league.

Gerhardt finally made it to Louisville in 1883, and was named player-manager. He inserted himself in the clean-up spot in the lineup, but eventually dropped himself to ninth, proving at least that over the season he had developed keener skills for evaluating batting talent. He led American Association second basemen in fielding range and was second in fielding percentage to Bid McPhee while batting .263, but missed several weeks of the season after getting hit in the face with a pitch. The following season was marred by the illness and death of an infant child, and Gerhardt was replaced as manager in mid-season. His batting average fell to .220.

But in those times of changing labor situations in baseball, Gerhardt was learning how to play the game. He signed for both of his seasons in Louisville with the stipulation that he not be reserved after the season and he took the opportunity to sign with the New York Giants for 1885 at a hefty pay raise. And if Joe Gerhardt hadn’t yet risen to the roll of the poster child for the weak-hitting, good-fielding infielder, that would soon change dramatically.

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The 1885 team that Gerhardt joined was quite different than the Giants of ’84 who’d finished in fourth place. This was partly because of new acquisitions, and partly because of new deployments for old stars.

The former resulted from a bit of skullduggery by John Day, president of the Metropolitan Exhibition Company, which owned both the National League’s Giants (then still known as the Gothams) and the New York Mets of the American Association. The Mets were the defending AA champs, having lost to Old Hoss Radbourn and the Providence Grays in the World Series of the previous fall. But admission in the AA was 25 cents per fan, as opposed to 50 cents in the NL; therefore, a National League powerhouse was of more value to Day than an American Association champion. The Mets released standout pitcher Tim Keefe and hard-hitting Dude Esterbrook, and after the mandated 10-day waiting period, the pair was signed by the Giants.

Meanwhile, Jim O’Rourke, another future Hall-of-Famer who had been the face of the Buffalo franchise for four seasons as its player-manager and top hitter, was in the market for a new team. O’Rourke had played in Buffalo with the understanding that he would not be reserved from season to season, and when his young daughter died suddenly of an illness in the fall of ’83, he resolved to play for a team closer to his Connecticut home and told Buffalo management that 1884 would be his last year with the club. The Giants signed O’Rourke as a free agent heading into the 1885 season.

On the diamond, two future Hall-of-Famers would be getting new responsibilities. Roger Connor, who had played second base for the 1884 Giants, moved to his permanent home at first base. And John Montgomery Ward, the former pitching ace who’d played centerfield the year before, moved to the infield, at shortstop. That meant that, with Gerhardt, the Giants had all new defense up the middle.

On opening day, Joe Gerhardt was the star, singling in the eighth inning and later scoring the winning run in a 2-1 victory over Boston. It didn’t get any better than that; in fact, it got a lot worse.

The Giants had become the kind of team of which John Day had dreamed, an exciting, dominating club that would win three out of every four games. Keefe and Mickey Welch would combine to win 76 games. Four of the 10 batters in the league to hit .300 or better were in the New York lineup.

The only trouble was, Chicago was even better. The White Stockings, between John Clarkson‘s 53 victories and Cap Anson‘s league-leading 108 RBIs, held a two-game advantage in the standings when the Giants rolled into Chicago for a decisive four-game series in late September. The White Stockings won the first three games, and the pennant race was essentially over.

And Gerhardt? He was his usual reliable self in the field. He played every inning of every game for the Giants, an even 1,000 innings in all, was second in fielding percentage only to St. Louis’ Fred Dunlap and third in fielding range.

And he topped the league in several batting categories . . . or, rather, “bottomed” the league.

Among the 44 players with enough appearances to qualify for the batting title, he finished 44th . . . at .155.

On-base percentage? Forty-fourth, at .205.

Slugging percentage? Again, 44th at .195 . . . his 62 hits included only 14 for extra bases, with no home runs.

Gerhardt only had to look to his left to see a batter whose average was more than 200 points higher than his own. Connor led the league in hitting at .371, a full .216 higher than Gerhardt. That’s more than a full Mario Mendoza’s worth!

The Giants’ pitchers? Welch batted .206. Even Keefe, who managed just .163, would usually bat ahead of Gerhardt in the order.

The natural question is how Gerhardt managed to keep his spot in the lineup, and why the fans weren’t clamoring for his benching. But rather than being run out of town, Gerhardt was probably the most popular player on the team.

He was known as Move Up Joe, for his sideline exhortations to teammates on base to “Move up, move up.” David Nemec, in his series Major League Baseball Profiles of 19th Century players, says Gerhardt had “a gift of gab that made him enormously popular with New York fans.” Clearly, Gerhardt was the most gregarious of players on an exciting team, one who also was capable of making exciting plays in the field. In an era long before the days of the post-game interview, Gerhardt was a player to whom writers for New York’s newspapers knew they could go for a good quote. And because, in the days before national wire services, many of those writers were also correspondents for other papers around the nation, Move Up Joe became a recognized figure in the nation’s sporting press.

Maybe the best summation of all of these factors is illustrated by Gerhardt’s final day as a Giant.

With the same roster as the previous year, the 1886 Giants had another strong season, at 75-44. That was only good for third place, however, far behind Chicago and Detroit, who battled it out for the pennant into the final week of the season. Gerhardt had his usual strong season in the field and improved at the plate, but still batted a woeful .190 and was clearly the weakest link in the batting order.

But more than that, Gerhardt’s relative popularity may have become a sore spot to some of the other players, particularly Buck Ewing, the team’s captain and catcher. Ewing was recognized as one of baseball’s greatest catchers, but was reaching an age when catching on a daily basis was taking a physical toll. So when he agreed to re-sign with the Giants for 1887, it was with the stipulation that he’d move out from behind the plate to a spot in the field . . . to second base.

A switch from catcher to second baseman (Craig Biggio to the contrary) is hardly a natural exchange, and if Ewing thought that New York’s fandom would embrace the move, he was sorely mistaken. The Giants got off to a slow start, and even when they won they weren’t particularly impressive. And the local press was quick to weigh in, singling out Ewing’s play in particular.

In the May 10 editions of the New York Times, after the Giants had fallen to Washington, 7-4, to drop to 5-4 on the season, the reporter on hand had this to say:

Ewing’s masterly inefficiency at second base was the feature of the game, and every spectator sighed because Joe Gerhardt was not there to do the work that Ewing couldn’t do. His unfitness for the position grows more and more apparent with each succeeding game, and his strength at the bat and fairly good base-running by no means counterbalances his poor play as an in-fielder.

Gerhardt, meanwhile, had only gotten into a single game, going hitless in four at-bats. And he wasn’t happy with the situation.

The following day, the baseball writer for the New York Sun had a top-of-the-page analysis of the Giants’ start, headlined Is the New York Club Petering Out? which included the following anaylsis:

Two pitchers is all they have to depend on. Danny Richardson is a very weak third base, a wooden man could play second about as well as Ewing. . . . Ewing was put on Joe Gerhardt’s post at second base for his batting, but it would be far better to have a man there who would not lose games, even if he did not win them.

But the real news of the day was to be found later in the story:

Joe Gerhardt left the Polo grounds yesterday. During the sixth inning he stepped out of the club house. He glanced around once or twice for a parting look, and hastily brushing a tear from his eye he started down the left field path toward the main entrance. As he came along with his bundle under his arm the crowd saw him. Never in the history of the Polo grounds did a player get such a reception as he received, and the cheers continued long after he was out of sight. Joe said afterward that he would get his release from the club this morning, and would at once sign with the Metropolitan Club. He will leave for Cincinnati to join that club to-morrow night.

“I was laid off because I could not bat,” said he. “The club, when they first engaged me, knew this, but they said that they did not care if I did not hit a ball once in a year. I have no hard feelings toward any of the men, but I tell you that the loss of the championship by this club for two years was caused by two men alone. No man on that team can play ball above a certain standard without getting himself in trouble, and it is this that will sooner or later break up the team. I would not play with the nine again if I never played at all.”

Pretty strong stuff . . . this again illustrates Gerhardt’s strong relationship with the media, that he would get such a complete airing of his grievances. Interestingly, the author of the piece did not expand on Gerhardt’s singling out of “two men alone.” Perhaps it was assumed that his audience would know to whom Gerhardt was referring. Perhaps it was Day and Giants’ manager Jim Mutrie being called out for mismanagement.

Or perhaps it was someone else. Consider this piece that appeared in the baseball notes of the Indianapolis News a week later:

Gerhardt is loud in his denunciation of Ewing, who practically froze him out of the New York team by signing a contract to play second and not at all behind the bat. [John Montgomery] Ward, the captain of the Giants, also receives a send-off, as he would not permit Joe to practice with the regular team. Gerhardt has joined the Metropolitans and is doing good work for them.

Whatever the case, both Gerhardt and the Giants appear to have been happy to have seen the last of each other. But Gerhardt hadn’t seen the last of New York. The Metropolitans, now no longer owned by Day, were happy to sign him. Five days later, the New York Times reported in its story of the Mets’ game against Cleveland,

Joe Gerhardt received a loud demonstration when he appear on the field.

The game was in Cleveland, an indication that “Move Up, No Hit, Good Field Joe” wasn’t just a New York phenomenon.

It would be heart-warming to report that Joe Gerhardt regained his hitting stroke, led the Mets to the American Association pennant and helped them vanquish the Giants in the World Series. This, of course, did not happen. He finished second in the league to Bid McPhee in fielding range among second basemen and batted a very Gerhardt-like .224. The Metropolitans, who were already on shaky financial grounds, finished 44-89 and folded at the end of the year.

The Giants, on the other hand, solved their problems in the infield by flipping Ewing and Richardson, the young utility player who developed into a strong second baseman. The Giants righted themselves and finished the season 68-55, well behind the champion Detroit Wolverines. But Ewing eventually realized that he could prolong his career behind the plate by occasionally taking a day off and allowing Pat Murphy or William “California” Brown to fill in, and in 1888 and ’89, he led the Giants to two National League championships and as many postseason series titles.

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For all his popularity, Gerhardt found himself a man without a team in 1888, and spent two seasons playing for minor league teams in Jersey City and Hartford, before acting out the final scenes of his major league career.

In 1890, with the National League and American Association decimated by defections to the Players League, Gerhardt caught on with the Brooklyn Gladiators, a last-minute addition to the Association. When the team folded in early August, he was taken on as the player-manager of the St. Louis Browns. He had the ultimate Joe Gerhardt season, leading the AA second baseman in every category except errors . . . all while batting .217, with career highs of three home runs and 51 RBIs.

But the Browns released him after the season. He hooked up with a Louisville franchise for a third time the following season, but lasted only two games before returning to New York to play for the Albany team in the Eastern League. After three seasons as player-manager with the Senators, he called it a career. He remained in New York, working over the years as a manager of a cafe, the operator of two hotels and even the manager of a bowling alley, before dying at the age of 67.

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Today, if Joe Gerhardt is remembered at all, it’s for two things: his monumentally poor hitting season of 1885, and his prolific work in the field.

Nemec, in a sidebar in The Great Encyclopedia of 19th Century Major League Baseball, identifies Gerhardt’s .155 batting average in ’85 as the worst of any player in the century that played 100 or more games in a season. But is that an accurate standard, considering that National League teams didn’t begin to play as many as 100 games in a season until 1884?

Using baseball-reference.com’s sorting function and the site’s standards for qualifiers for each individual season, there were actually 11 batters who had worse batting average’s over a season than Gerhardt’s 1885 numbers.

The worst two seasons were both turned in by Deacon White’s brother, Will White, who batted .136 in 1879 and .142 a year earlier. White could be forgiven, though, since he was a pitcher, winning 73 games in the two years combined. In the days one one-man rotations, most pitchers had enough appearances to qualify for the batting title, and most pitchers were also decent enough hitters to not embarrass themselves.

But think about that 1879 season . . . it was also the year that Gerhardt dropped to .198, giving the Reds a very unproductive end of the order. Is it any wonder that Gerhardt was the one that got the boot at the end of the year?

Most of the others on that list were middle infielders, giving strength to the argument that good fielding wipes away sins at the plate. Not any more, though. In the 21st Century, there have been only four sub-.200 seasons among qualifiers, and in each case, the player in question hit no fewer than 19 home runs. Mark Reynolds, in 2010, batted .198 and struck out 211 times, but he also hit 32 home runs and drove in 85. Modern teams apparently are more likely to accept a lousy batting average in exchange for power, rather than fielding finesse.

In the field, Gerhardt continues to hold one particularly impressive record, the career mark for fielding range at second base (putouts and assists per game) at 6.46. The top nine on the list are all from the 19th Century, which suggests the relative importance of infield play in the first quarter of a century of the major leagues. Gerhardt only ranked first in the league in the category a handful of times in his career, so his career ranking is a testimony to the fact his skills didn’t diminish with age; his final season was statistically his best.

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On March 11, 1922, Gerhardt died of a heart attack on his way to work in Middleton, N.Y. His passing was briefly noted in the March 16 edition of The Sporting News, but the final eulogy was accorded to New York sportswriter John M. Foster, who two weeks later penned a piece with the headline No Second Baseman Ever Excelled Joe Gerhardt. That, and a concluding paragraph considering the merits of a number of second baseman and concluding with the line “None had anything on ‘Move Up Joe’ Gerhardt,” show up in short biographies of the second baseman.

Reporters and columnists, of course, don’t write the headlines that appear on their stories, and a close reading of the column doesn’t encourage the idea that the author was claiming Gerhardt to have been the best at the keystone sack. The meandering piece does point out Gerhardt’s popularity, but midway through devolves into a somewhat humorous commentary on the regional rivalry of Cincinnati and Louisville (two cities in which Gerhardt played) before returning to the point. What’s missed about the final paragraph is that even Foster didn’t claim that Gerhardt was the best:

He played second base with the smoothness of Bid McPhee of Cincinnati, when McPhee was great, but he couldn’t cover the ground that Bid did . . .

In the end, Joe Gerhardt doesn’t exactly fit the role of a 19th Century Mario Mendoza. Clearly, he was one of the leading fielders of his day, and just as clearly, despite a promising start, he at some point lost the ability to hit major league pitching consistently. Still, that didn’t seem to be as crucial to his value in his own day as we might expect, weighing these matters from our perspective of one and a quarter centuries later.

More than anything, Gerhardt appears to have been the right man at the right place in the right time.

New York was the birthplace of what would become America’s game, but at the major league level, the game had been dominated for years by teams from Boston, Chicago, even Providence. The Giants energized interest in the sport in the nation’s largest city, and Joe Gerhardt was able to ride the crest of that wave of excitement.

He was never a superstar, but with his trademark chatter and his ease at dealing with the media, he was, for a brief time, New York’s chosen son.

Joe Gerhardt’s grave marker. Note a discrepancy between date of death provided by baseball researchers and marker. Photo by Tim Evanson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Gerhardt

Sources:Major League Baseball Profiles 1871-1900, Volume 1, by David NemecThe Great Encyclopedia of 19th Century Major League Baseball, by David NemecPlayers and Teams of the National Association, 1871-1875, by Paul BateselA Biographical Dictionary of Major League Baseball Managers, by John C. SkipperThe Sporting News, March 30, 1922 (No Second Baseman Ever Excelled Joe Gerhardt, by John M. Foster)
May, 1885 editions of the New York Times, the New York Sun and the Indianapolis News

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A Guest Blog by Van Nightingale

It was perhaps inevitable that Van Nightingale would cross paths with Ars Longa Art Cards.

Van opened his first pack of baseball cards at age 9, the first of many thousand. A year and a half later, he received for Christmas a copy of The Glory of Their Times, Lawrence Ritter's seminal oral history of baseball in the early years of the 20th Century. A year later, a copy of the first edition of the MacMillan Baseball Encylopedia was found under the tree, presenting 25 years of 19th Century records of players and teams of which the average fan was barely aware.

From a few years as a sports reporter, Nightingale's resume includes a season spent as the beat reporter covering the Tidewater Tides- the year Mookie Wilson tore up the International League. In the ensuing three decades spent on the desk, he has laid out countless sports pages at the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot and the Los Angeles Times.

Nightingale lives in Orange County, California, with his wife, Pam, five cats and a baseball library that threatens to burst the seams of his home office.

Ars Longa Welcomes Van

In early 2015 I received an email from a customer whose sudden presence and participation in my eBay auctions was noticeable. It was from Van and his email contained a thoughtful and eloquent biographical and statistical synopsis of what he had learned about the players on the Ars Longa cards he had purchased the week before.

The email covered a range of obscure accomplishments, curious connections and interesting biographical and historical anecdotes that one would only know had they done their homework.

In that moment I had the idea to host a customer-written blog on this website, but I kept the idea to myself.

Over the next six months I received a number of similar emails from Van; every one excellent and illuminating. I was thrilled that my work would inspire such passionate research into 19th century baseball, and grateful that Van would share his discoveries with me, but it didn't feel right that I should be the only audience for his work.

And so here we are! I shared with Van the idea that he had inspired all those months ago and he has graciously accepted an invitation to contribute his time, energy, passion, research and writing abilities to this website. I am delighted and excited to add such a customer driven perspective and dimension to the Ars Longa experience.